


little bit of elbow grease

by Hueyhuey



Series: big bad bright fireworks [7]
Category: Daredevil (Comics), Daredevil (TV), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Foggy Nelson's obnoxious nicknames, Gen, Identity Reveal, Light-Hearted Antics, POV Foggy Nelson, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter's getting paid now!, Team Red, boring officework
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:27:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23573854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hueyhuey/pseuds/Hueyhuey
Summary: Foggy has come up with a plan.He’s going to be very sneaky and very cunning.He’s going to do investigator things. He’s going to be like Karen, except he’ll do it with some goddamned esteem.(Foggy knows that Peter is Spider-Man, and he's going to prove it if it's the last thing he does.)
Relationships: Franklin "Foggy" Nelson & Peter Parker, Matt Murdock & Franklin "Foggy" Nelson
Series: big bad bright fireworks [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1543033
Comments: 17
Kudos: 277





	little bit of elbow grease

The kid’s enhanced. This is an indisputable fact. Foggy knows this. He’s known it since the meeting at the café wherein May dragged that freaky-deeky ball of nerves all the way from their apartment to make a disheveled appearance. He’d gotten one good look into Peter’s frantic eyes and seen that stare and known immediately: the kid had been hunted. He knew the intricacies of the predator-prey relationship in New York just as well as Matt did. Peter’s eyes bored holes into Foggy’s forearms and analyzed every stimulus like it was a direct threat to his life. He was wiry as all get-out and warier than a bat fresh out of hell. He’d looked that day like Matt had when he was first getting started: scared and determined and annoyingly righteous. 

It took a lot of lobbying and groveling and donated meat pies to convince Peter to join them at the new office, but he’d settled down into a routine eventually and had even been promoted to their payroll as a part-timer a couple of months ago. The kid’s been a hoot, and he’s a welcome distraction for Wade when he accompanies Matt to work. He’s great with the kid clients and he’s damn good at triaging and organizing Karen’s occasional oil spills from her clusterfuck office at the end of the hall.

Foggy likes Peter. He wishes every day that he’d met the Parkers earlier; apparently May found out about Matt’s moonlight gig a while back and has assisted in a couple of minor emergencies in the time since, bless her soul. Won’t be long before all five goddamn boroughs plus the rest of the world finds out, so Foggy’s trying to maximize his profits while he can. He’s given Matt a lot of shirts off his back and they always seem to return to him as dirty laundry. About time that weight gets distributed. 

Matt loves Peter. It’s so fucking obvious that they share a bond. Day before yesterday, Foggy watched Matt wrangle the kid into the conference room to work on one of their defense cases. They were whispering like gossipy aunts in the cramped space, hunched all over the table and pacing all around, back and forth. Peter had thought of something to help their strategy while he was attempting to balance on one leg in the spinning chair at the head of the table and he’d almost fallen off in his excitement. Foggy walked past the open doorway about ten minutes after that and he swore Peter was scaling the walls trying to puzzle out whatever it was Matt was drilling him on.

The evidence for Peter’s supernatural enhancement keeps piling up. It’s getting difficult to ignore and Foggy doesn’t want to break the kid’s heart by finding out mid-crisis like he did with Matt. But he knows.

He knows it in his gut.

Plus, the kid’s just picked up a two hundred and fifty pound printer in the storage room without so much as a grunt of exertion and carried it across the office, out the door, and down to the delivery van. Foggy doesn’t care how much Peter may claim he can lift, physics calls bullshit on that scrawny ass. Ain’t no one with legs that skinny moving anything over a hundred-fifty. 

Foggy’s got some time to kill before his next meeting. Call it an extended lunch break. He can do what he wants. He’s self-employed.

He’s come up with a plan. 

He’s going to be very sneaky and very cunning.

He’s going to do investigator things. He’s going to be like Karen, except he’ll do it with some goddamned esteem.

He cements his plan while he waits for Peter to return with the new printer. He sees the shock of brown hair cross the threshold of the office underneath a heavy looking box and decides that now is the time to take action. 

“Hey, Pete. I could use some help before you get to settin’ that up.”

The kid visibly deflates, much to Foggy’s amusement, and in his rush to accommodate the request he middles the corner of the box on the side of his sandaled right foot. Foggy’s impressed; no curses escape his mouth and he slouches his way to the door of the office without breaking character, although he’s limping a little bit. Foggy looks down and winces in sympathy. “You can call me Peter, Mr. Nelson. What were you needing?” Peter asks through a grimace. 

His eyes aren’t full of that righteous terror that Foggy remembers so plainly from their initial meeting. Today, they’re beaten and sleep-deprived. The right one still has a stray tear threatening to spill from the box incident. Foggy almost changes his mind, but then he recalls the time that the kid literally climbed the wall to get at a wasp nest and ended up stuck upside down, one hand anchored on the motor of the ceiling fan, the other batting at the nest, face contorted in concentration. The laws of physics simply do not mesh with the image that memory conjures.

Foggy gestures for Peter to sit, which is politely waved off. No harm, no foul. He figures that his plan can continue with both parties at eye level. “You’re real strong, Pete,—“

“It’s Peter, Mr. Nelson.”

“Mhm. How often do you work out?”

“Mr. Nelson, did you need any help? I have the Stark internship in less than two hours and I was hoping to get the prin—“

“I’ve just got a couple of questions. If the printer doesn’t get done today, I’ll have Matt sic Wade on it. You’re real strong. How much do you lift?”

Peter’s face twists into a detached and hilariously bemused daze. “I don’t know, Mr. Nelson. I don’t really go to the gym.”

Foggy nods, thoughtful. Slow, like he has much to mull over. Like there’s drama involved in his thinking. Like he’s marinating on something. “You Spider-Man, Pete?”

Peter’s poker face is impressive. None of his features twitch, but he rocks forward in his flip-flops ever so slightly. Like he’s bracing against a strong wind. “No, Mr. Nelson. I’m not Spider-Man,” he responds.

“Well, you ain’t the Winter Soldier, that’s for damn sure. Hmm. How many Hawkeyes are there? Is there a third one? You Hawkeye? Barton collecting them now?”

“Mr. Nelson, I’ve never shot a bow in my life.”

Foggy nods with his whole upper torso and leverages off of his desk to breeze past Peter in the doorway. He winds around a child playing with his father in the waiting room and knocks lightly on Matt’s closed door. Soft dictating stops on the other side and he invites himself in with gusto. Matt looks a little annoyed at the disturbance, but Foggy presses on. These are very important matters. Peter droops into position behind him with much angst. 

Foggy extends his arm to Matt, who cocks a butterfly-bandaged eyebrow at his mid-thigh. “Matthew, my best friend. My partner in law and occasionally in minor misdemeanors, drunk and disorderly, et cetera, et cetera. I have only one question for you.”

Matt sighs like he is Atlas and Foggy is the world and aptly replies, “I was in the middle of a thought. What do you want?”

“Is this young, fresh boy to my left and a couple of feet back an enhanced individual?”

Matt condescends to pretend like he’s giving Peter a once-over. Foggy looks over too and finds, to his infinite delight, that Peter is bright red and trying to hide in his shirt. When he’s done, Matt turns to Foggy and says, “I’d say he’s unusually mature for his age.”

“How else might he be enhanced, Oh Saint Matthew?”

“Fog, I really wanna get back t—“

“Would you say that he is, perhaps, spider-like in his superhuman strength and superior intellect?”

Peter whimpers into his shirt. 

“Man, whatever. Who the fuck do you think concussed me last night? Did we not hire him to help move furniture and equipment? Maybe Spider-Man’s our paralegal. Maybe I found the profile of Steve Rogers on Bumble a couple nights ago at two in the morning. Maybe I’m tired because Barton exploded my boyfriend with land mines, of all possibly explosive devices, and I spent the night patchwork quilting him back together and listening to him bitch about how uneven my stitching was. Maybe--oh, maybe, just consider, and listen closely to this--you’re nosy as hell. Let me get back to work or I’m gonna curse you with plagues,” Matt spits.

“Thank you, Sir Carrottop. Your insight has been eye-opening and your horror stories appropriately graphic.”

“Fuck out of my office.”

Foggy closes the door with a flourish and flashes all of his teeth plus gums at Peter’s miserable face. The kid looks away and mumbles, “It was supposed to be a secret.”

Foggy puts his hand on Peter’s reluctant shoulder and squeezes. He says, “I have two points I want to make and you need to take me seriously for a second if either of them is going to have any impact. One, Matt wouldn’t have told me anything if he didn’t think I could be trusted. I know the identities of so many damn vigilantes in this city it’s fucking comical. You never need to worry about that.

Two, you can trust us: me and Karen. We’ve kept Matt alive for longer than should have been allowed. He’s better for it and lord knows it’s made me better equipped to handle emergencies. We’re all here for you if you need anything. You have my number, yeah?”

Peter nods and makes eye contact and Foggy’s hand returns to his side. “Use it. If you need legal or medical assistance and Matt or Wade or whoever else in your circle isn’t picking up, call me. Hell, call me if you’ve had a bad day or if you hate capitalism and want to rant or if you want advice about cured meat. Just, don’t hesitate. Don’t ever hesitate.”

Peter nods again and Foggy sees the spark start up again. It burns smoky in his eyes first and then moves across his brow, down the outline of his jaw, and out into the world. “Thank you. That means a lot .”

Foggy straightens his spine and replaces the candor with bravado. He slaps Peter on the back good-naturedly and says, “Okay. Back to work it is, then. I’d make some grand gesture or soliloquize something profound, but I think I’m running late for a meeting. The grind never stops, does it, Pete?”

“No, Mr. Nelson. And you really can call me Peter.”

“Oh, but that would take all of the spice out of it, Mr. Parker.”

Peter’s eyes disappear into the back of his head for a sustained five seconds. He turns around and crosses the lobby to pick the new printer up without bothering to exit the conversation with any grace. The child in the waiting area stops playing with his dad to watch the progress of Peter’s sandals dragging across the room.

They do have fun.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope y'all had some fun reading this! Please leave a comment if you did (or if you didn't, I'm such a whore for criticism).
> 
> I'm on Tumblr with the username [Hueyhuee](https://hueyhuee.tumblr.com/). Feel free to go bug me there if you so desire! 
> 
> Stay safe and take care of yourself right now. We're riding an apocalyptic tidal wave into the eternal nothing, but everyone's hands should be freshly washed, please and thank you.


End file.
